The PAOGA Vision

Defined in 2002, People Are Our Greatest Asset was predicated on the concern that the skills and talents of many individuals in the UK are unrecognised and wasted. It reflects the need and value of being able to identify, ‘market’ and exploit such skills to the benefit of both the individual and the employer in compliance with the Data Protection Act and with respect for an individual’s privacy. Obviously there is similar value in other aspects of an individuals’ life which can contribute to their Health, Wealth and Happiness.

The core of PAOGA is a personal, secure digital ‘safe deposit box’ in which the individual can store, manage, validate and share relevant personal information instead of relying on their data, given, harvested or stolen, scattered over hundreds of known and unknown public and private data silos with little or no control over its accuracy or distribution and abuse.

The Background

Since 2002 the broadband penetration in the UK has been steadily increasing as has the use of social networking and online transactions. Tracking this growth has been the increase of data abuse from the trivial and annoying (spam) to the serious and damaging (financial loss and reputation damage) which has been well documented in the media but poorly addressed by under resourced regulatory bodies.

We have developed demonstrator versions of PAOGAperson, a Personal Information Management Service, which allows individuals to store, manage, validate (using 3rd party trusted services such as GB-URU) and share personal information ‘under their control, with their consent, for their benefit’.

We have also developed MySortingOffice, a secure email service which allows the individual to create multiple anonymous email addresses for initial enquiries or specific relationships which can be deleted if abused or no longer required. It also demonstrates how an individual can ‘publish’ their wants and intentions to ‘pull’ relevant marketing campaigns to a temporary email inbox which, if appropriate, can generate revenue for the individual on a Permission Based Marketing model.

The underlying PAOGAplatform and security has been used by independent application developers to provide a PRINCE2 compliant project management service pilot which was successfully tested and approved by BT, NHS Trusts and Local Government. It was also used to develop a Home Information Pack creation and secure distribution solution.

During this period PAOGA was advocating SRM (Supplier Relationship Management), recently redefined in the US and adopted as VRM, as an alternative for concerned individuals with their consumer-supplier relationships. We believe that the potential goes far beyond the retail sector and therefore favour the X-RM acronym to address an individuals’ multiple suppliers of products and services in their various personas as student, employee, patient, consumer, investor, et al.

The future

It has taken the recent and extreme breakdown of TRUST in the financial and government sectors to trigger the conditions required for individuals to take control and, importantly, responsibility for their personal information.

We recognise that this is a disruptive, global and worthy proposition and that technology ‘partnerships’ with global and local suppliers of services and expertise are necessary to extol the benefits and address the concerns of the supply chain who, traditionally ‘change averse’, are open to cost saving, legal compliance and competitive advantage as they struggle to demonstrate and regain TRUST in their customer relations.

To achieve this requires cooperation between the visionaries to deliver a clear and consistent objective, embracing emerging standards, to the early adopters. The benefits to both the individual and the supply chain of this User Driven proposition will increase exponentially as we achieve critical mass.

Funding to date has been provided by the company’s executives and Friends & Family

Further information is available from Graham Sadd – CEO, PAOGA Limited

Blog: http://blog.grahamsadd.com

Email: graham@paoga.com